


Echo Without Source

by GreyNarcissus



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Angst, Happy Valentines Day!, Heartbreak, Jonathan is gone-athan, M/M, No really it's just unrequited love all the way down, Pining, Sort of Johnsquared if you look at it sideways, Unrequited Love, did I mention the angst?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29347719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyNarcissus/pseuds/GreyNarcissus
Summary: Everywhere in Starecross, every way John Segundus looked, he saw something that reminded him of Jonathan Strange. It was as if the Second Magician of the Age was etched into the surface of magic itself, and Starecross, England’s first school of magic, so intrinsically tied to his work, could not help but reflect him...Despite five years passing since Hurtfew Abbey vanished taking Jonathan with it, not a day has passed that he hasn't been on John's mind.
Relationships: John Segundus/Jonathan Strange
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6
Collections: JSAMN Valentine's Rarepair Fest!





	Echo Without Source

**Author's Note:**

  * For [touchmytardis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/touchmytardis/gifts).



Everywhere in Starecross, every way John Segundus looked, he saw something that reminded him of Jonathan Strange. 

It was as if the Second Magician of the Age was etched into the surface of magic itself, and Starecross, England’s first school of magic, so intrinsically tied to his work, could not help but reflect him. He saw the darkness of Strange’s hair in the ancient wood that clad the walls, the shape of his thoughts in the pages of the books in the library. The sound of his laugh was in the babbling of the brook under the bridge, the thunder of his anger in the wind that howled in the eaves at night. His face was in the dreams that waited for John behind the curtains of his bed. 

He was not ungrateful for the joy and comfort in his life - ingratitude was not in the nature of John Segundus. He was headmaster of Starecross Academy of Magic, a gentleman and a gentleman’s son, a man born to privilege and social standing (if lacking the wealth usually attendant on the position), but still he expected nothing of the world, and could not bring himself to treat it with anything other than the deepest of respect and gratefulness. 

He enjoyed the company of his friends and fellow-teachers - Mr Honeyfoot, always kind and warm no matter the circumstance; Mr Childermass, brusque and hardened but ever-willing to go to any lengths for his students and friends; Levy and Purfois and Hadley-Bright, brimming over with the bright hope and glee of the future; Miss Redruth, proud, fierce matriarch of their female students; even, somehow, Arabella, who sat in state as the dowager empress of the new world of magic her husband had helped to forge. 

But they were not Jonathan. 

He doubted anyone, ever, could stand in the place of that great man. No-one would ever have the tenacity it took to stand up to Gilbert Norrell in the way Strange had. No-one would ever have the sheer bloody-minded lack of fear required to take the first steps a man had taken on the King’s Roads in centuries, purely to prove a point to a stranger in a coffee-house. No-one would be able to summon the greatest of the Argentines into his dreams with nothing more than some half-pieced-together ideas from a book that had never even helped the man who wrote it. 

And no-one would ever be able to say that John Segundus had fallen irretrievably in love with them from the first moment that gentleman had laid his eyes upon them. 

His heart belonged to Jonathan Strange. He knew that now, though it had taken him years to accept it. He could not deny his… particular peculiarity of affections in general, he was not quite so stubborn as to refuse to acknowledge that women had never held any attraction to him save as valuable friends and colleagues. But it had taken a while for him to allow himself to acknowledge that his devotion to Jonathan, the ache that filled his heart at the mention of that name, was more than scholarly affection or loyalty to the head of one’s cause. It was love, a deep, aching love that sat in his bones and refused to be replaced or ignored. And oh, how he had tried.

For a while, he had fancied himself to be falling in love with Childermass - for after all, was he not a very romantic figure, a wandering, untetherable spirit of the moors, with knowledge in his storm-dark eyes and mystery in his past and future both? Why ought John not to fall in love with him, his friend and colleague and most trusted fellow-magician? It almost made him feel light again, that something might at last take away the crush of the longing Jonathan had unwittingly left behind him. 

But the supposition had come to nothing. They had shared one single kiss, in the glow of the library fireplace, and he had tried with all his soul to feel the passion he knew he would feel if it had been Strange’s arms around his waist, Strange’s scent of cloves and crisp night air filling his mind. But as they pulled apart, John saw that sly, sad quirk of Childermass’s lips, that realisation that he was not who John was really thinking of. No-one could ever hide a single damned thing from John Childermass. The Northerner had apologised, and allowed himself one final moment in John’s eyes, before excusing himself without another word. It was never spoken of again, and, to look at how little his behaviour towards John had changed, that gentleman sometimes doubted it had happened at all. It was, he supposed, yet one more thing that he was grateful for: that he had surrounded himself with people of such good heart. 

(There was, he believed, a half-hearted expectation in certain areas of society that he and Arabella would marry, and certainly if he was ever obliged to take up with any woman it would be her, who shared so perfectly his pain and grief over the loss of that brilliantly idiotic man. 

But the legacy he had left behind, they were learning, had created opportunity to rewrite the rules of the world as they knew it, and every day that passed seemed to prove that the etiquette that governed the mundane world seemed to care a little less for the world of magic. So Arabella remained a widow, and Miss Redruth remained unmarried, in a house filled with bachelors, and fewer and fewer people seemed to care about such things when they lived in a world where roads opened to other lands in their gardens and rosebushes burst into song in harmony with the lavender when the moon was too full.)

Even now, five years after the disappearance of the Tower of Darkness that had taken Jonathan Strange out of this world, John’s heart still sometimes ached to think of what he had lost. He tried, with all his soul, to tell himself that it was foolish to waste so much of himself on these thoughts, to drift off into daydreams when he ought to have been correcting essays and writing letters and assigning studies, daydreams of something that had never even come to be. But the affairs of the heart, he had come to understand, could not be so readily schooled into good order. They were not like facts and figures that could be looked up and correlated against each other in this or that old tome. They were wild things, untameable and unpredictable, and he was utterly lost to the swirling dance of their whims. 

Arabella had thrice caught him recently with his head in his hands, silent hopeless sobs shaking his thin frame. Each time, she had simply sat at his side, wrapped his hands in hers and let him weep into her shoulder until he was too exhausted to continue. She did not judge, or question, or give any indication besides the gentle sweep of her thumb over his knuckles that she was even aware of his tears. She merely sat with him until the pain subsided far enough that he could ignore it once more, could pull that shroud back over its sharp edges and put it back into its scarred, bleeding place in his heart. 

And again she sat with him tonight, the embers in the grate dying slowly with muted pops and crackles, their final sighs a fitting tribute to John’s anguish. When she surmised he would have enough breath to answer, she asked him quietly what he needed - a cup of tea, a glass of brandy. Whatever he asked, if it was in her power she would fetch it to him. 

And he could feel the resolve in the grip of her slim fingers, the warmth, the determination to help. It almost set him to tears again, and would have, had he not been so utterly, painfully empty. What he needed could not be granted by any force in this world, and he told her so, his voice rough from tears and grief, and could say no more. How could he begin to explain to her, now or ever, that what he would ask for was her husband? And she nodded, with that sad, calm understanding of the pain in the world that had become their closest commonality, and bade him goodnight, and the best dreams that could be hoped for. 

And perhaps something, in the house, or his memory, struck a note of music in the back of John’s head. Not a note that he could hear, or feel. It simply hummed, unknown and unheeded, in his mind, until he had pulled off enough of his clothes that he could justify collapsing into bed and drifting into exhausted unconsciousness. 

For the rest of his life, he would wonder if it had been a dream, or a vision, or if he had somehow been transported across realms to a place between places. It did not matter. All that mattered was that when he opened his eyes, before him was a sight that filled him with such bittersweet happiness he cried out in shock to feel it. 

He could not be sure, at first, that it truly was Jonathan. He had conjured this image in his mind so many times, he had almost forgotten what the real thing had looked like, the memory reduced to intuition, feelings rather than anything real. But as he watched that familiarly mischievous, almost bashful smile creep over the face he knew so well, it returned to him with a clarity as sharp as the prick of a needle. 

He did not know how he came to be in Jonathan’s arms, he had no memory of crossing the space between them. All he knew was the way the smell of cloves and cobblestones and dusty ancient books filled his mind, as he buried his face in the ragged black he supposed Jonathan had worn the day he was ripped out of the world. It was not right, he thought dimly to himself as the man he loved held him tightly through the shaking sobs that bubbled up from deep within him, that someone like Jonathan Strange should be condemned to wear these dull, dour weeds for the rest of time. 

What passed between them, he did not remember afterwards. Perhaps it was best that he did not. The recollection of it might have torn him apart when paired with the knowledge he could never have it again, had possibly never had it in the first place. All that stuck in his memory was the warmth of Jonathan’s smile, the heartbreaking tenderness in his voice as he breathed John’s name, the ink and dust trapped beneath his fingernails and in his silver-streaked hair. At the corners of his vision he could have seen, if he had cared to look, a swirl of blue, a glimmer of gemstones. But he did not care to look anywhere except at Jonathan, at Jonathan Strange, the man he loved, the man he had loved and mourned and wept for, for years on end. Why need anything else exist, why could he not surrender everything and simply  _ be _ , here, in these arms at last, for the rest of time? 

It was odd. When he woke, it was as if he had already expected to wake up weeping, although he had not yet understood that he had been asleep at all - but he felt nothing but a quiet, calm sense of peace. The pillow was wet beneath his cheeks, but his heart was lighter than it had been in longer than he cared to contemplate. 

Over the breakfast table, Childermass gave John one of his curious, inscrutable stares, until John began to return it. He had slept badly, Childermass offered by way of (unsatisfactory) explanation. It took a little longer for anything else to be offered by the Yorkshireman, and John was already pouring his second cup of tea when the other half of the question came - had John been doing magic last night? 

It made him pause. He had not been aware of having done magic and had certainly not set out to do any, but it was not impossible that he had, in his distraction -

But then Childermass seemed to dismiss the idea. What he had felt was not like John’s magic, he stated - though it was clear that the knowledge asked more questions than it answered, and he excused himself to the garden in consternation, already packing his pipe as he went. 

John met Arabella’s eyes at the other end of the table. The smile she gave him was tired but content, as if a storm in her heart had finally broken and spent the night burning itself out, and it occurred to him that he had not seen her so peaceful in what felt like years. 

It was a peace, he knew, whose twin he carried within himself. 


End file.
